Flora finished her story, but she wanted courage to read it to her husband, who was very fastidious about his wife's literary performances. And many long years passed away, and they had known great sorrows and trials in the Canadian wilderness, before she again brought the time-worn manuscript to light, and submitted it to his critical eye. And because it pleased him, she, with the vanity natural to the sex, to say nothing of the vanity so common to the author, thought that it might find favour with the public. They had just reached the banks of Newfoundland, when she commenced writing Noah Cotton, and the ship still lay there in rain and fog, when she brought it to a close. The condition of the _Anne_ and her passengers was little to be envied. In the steerage, the provisions of the emigrants were nearly exhausted, and the allowance of execrable water was diminished to a pint a day per head. Famine already began to stare them in the face. They had been six weeks at sea, and the poorer emigrants had only provided necessaries for that period. The Captain was obliged to examine the stores which still remained, and to charge the people to make the most sparing use of them until they made land. The improvident, by this time, were utterly destitute, and were fed by the Captain, who made them pay what little they could towards their support. This, Mr. Lootie told them, was an act of tyranny, for the Captain was bound to feed them, as long as he had a biscuit in the ship. Indeed, he lost no opportunity of fostering dissentions between Boreas and his people; and the difficult position in which the old sailor was placed was rendered doubly so, by the mischievous and false representations of this base-minded man. The poor emigrants grew discontented, as their wants daily increased, and had no longer spirits to dance and enjoy themselves; yet some sort of excitement seemed absolutely necessary, to keep their minds from preying upon themselves and each other. Now would have been the time for Mr. S----to have proved his Christian ministry, and tried by his advice, and the gentle application of that unerring balsam for all diseases of mind and body, the Word of God, to reconcile these poor people to their situation, and teach them to bear with fortitude the further trials to which they might be exposed. But at this critical period of the voyage, he kept aloof, and seldom made his appearance upon the deck, or if he did steal out for a constitutional promenade, he rarely exchanged a salutation with the passengers. Not so Mr. Lootie. The little brown man had roused himself from his lair, and was all alive. He might constantly be seen near the forecastle, surrounded by a set of half-famished young fellows, enjoying a low species of gambling, well known to school-boys as "Pitch and Toss," "_Chuck Farthing_," and other equally elegant terms, quite worthy of the amusement.